British army materiel (and men?) shipped to the Pacific theatre in 1945?

Discussion in 'War Against Japan' started by Chris C, Oct 10, 2020.

  1. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    I know I've read about soldiers in Europe potentially going to the Pacific after VE Day, and I suppose with the manpower shortage it would have been unlikely for any army units to be sent before then.

    What about physical materiel, though? In of all things a file on wading equipment, 12 July 1945, there is a reference to Archers "already dispatched to SEAC". If Archers were sent were there also tanks, artillery, and supplies en route?
     
  2. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    I’m not sure what the British were doing in this regards (although the British had been fighting in SE Asia since the start of the war)......but Canada was planning the following:

    Canadian Army Pacific Force
    The Canadian Army Pacific Force was raised in 1945 as a field force intended to participate in the last phase of The War Against Japan, an anticipated Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands in the last phase of the Second World War. The CAPF was based on an infantry division structure, however, to increase operability with the Americans, certain units bore US organizational structures and names. As well, Canadian units went into training with US weapons to ease logistical concerns.

    Major General Bert Hoffmeister was named to command the division, and the three Infantry Regiments (the equivalent of a Canadian brigade) had battalions bearing the name of those infantry battalions that had fought with the 1st Canadian Infantry Division in Europe.

    When the atomic bombings brought the war to a swift close in Aug and Sep 1945, the CAPF was disbanded.

    www.canadiansoldiers.com

    Link below to a Canadian Army document outlining Canada’s involvement in the Pacific Force

    The Canadian Army Pacific Force, 1944-1945 - Canada.ca

    Divisional Patch for the Canadian Army Pacific Force.......the 6 Colours in the patch represents the colours of the 6 Canadian Division’s that the men volunteering for the force were coming from (1st to 6th Divisions)
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
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  3. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    The Maple Leaf; 23 June 1945

    First Division Names Adopted By Canadian Far East Force
    Ottawa—(CP)—Famous fighting names of 10 First Canadian Infantry Division units which served in the Mediterranean and Northwestern Europe will be perpetuated in the Sixth Division which Maj.-Gen. Bert Hoffmeister will lead against the Japanese, it is announced here.

    Previously it had been announced the units would be designated by the numbers of their military districts.

    They are:
    Completing the Sixth Division will be the Royal Montreal Regiment and the Grenadier Guards, both of Montreal.

    Serious training for the Pacific will begin early in September in Kentucky.

    In a Washington interview, General Hoffmeister said 28,000 European veterans had volunteered to serve with the limited force of 30,000.

    Link to more information in Canadian’s involvement in the Pacific, including the Pacific Force

    Canada Army 1 Six Years of War: Chapter 16: Pacific Plans and Enterprises, 1943–1945
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
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  4. sol

    sol Very Senior Member

    At least three British formations were planned to be shipped to the Far East and Pacific, as far as I know
    • 5th Parachute Brigade was already on the route to India when war ended, and they took part in fighting in the DEI
    • 3rd Infantry Division was planned to be part of the Commonwealth Corps that would took part in the Invasion of Japan.
    • 61st Infantry Division, based in the UK, was intended to be converted as the light infantry division and then send to the Far East
    Japanese capitulation canceled plans for sending both 3rd and 61st Division. I'm not aware of any other formation on Division or Brigade level that planned to be shipped to the East, at least during the period between VE and VJ days.
     
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  5. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    I'll break down what I know into 2 parts in separate posts, proposed deployments to
    1. SEAC and
    2. the Pacific in time for Operation Coronet scheduled for March 1946. I've recently discovered some more information on British plans for this which differ from what the USA finally agreed to.

    SEAC
    Firstly it was planned that 4,8 and 10 Indian Infantry and 31 Indian Armoured Divisions would be redeployed from Italy and the Middle East to India in the latter part of 1945. AFAIK the infantry divisions contained 9 British infantry battalions plus some artillery units. It is therefore likely that these British units would need to be replaced or at least have some new drafts from Britain before going further east, given the Python promise.

    6th British Airborne Div. Planned for India to form an Airborne Corps along with 44th Indian Airborne (itself to be ready in Feb 1946) with support from part of 38 Group RAF. The only part to reach India was the 5th Parachute Brigade, which arrived in July 1945 and were landed by sea as part of Operations Zipper and Tiderace to reoccupy Malaya and Singapore in Sept and then went on to Java in Dec until April 1946. The rest of the Division was, due to the end of the war, retained in the Middle East as an Imperial Reserve.

    61st Infantry Div. This had been a training division in the Britain. It was to be re-roled from Aug 1945 as a "Light Division", but keeping its 3 brigades. The end of the war saw this cancelled and it disbanded in Nov 1945.

    34th Armoured Brigade. It was announced on 18th May 1945 that this unit was to be sent to India and be re-equipped with Churchill tanks. Ultimately it never left the UK. Its composition was subject to a lot of change between May and Aug 1945 but the plan was for it to consist of the following by the time it left the UK:-
    107th Regt RAC
    4th RTR
    1 Royal Gloucestershire Hussars.

    The following units were to be attached to the Brigade until it arrived in SEAC
    4/7 Royal Dragoon Guards - Sherman equipped in 8th Armd Brig in NWE in May 1945. To be detached to an Indian Armoured Division (probably the 31st which was an armoured regiment short at the time)
    49 Armoured Carrier Regt with Ram Kangaroo.

    The plan for this Brigade was that it should have an equipment of 1/3 Crocodile and 2/3 Churchill gun tanks, despite the Crocodile not being considered ideal for jungle operations. On the other hand this may have been the Armoured Brigade earmarked in British plans for Op Coronet. More on that in my next post.

    There was also a reorganisation of the three Indian Armoured Brigades taking place in Summer 1945. 254th Indian Armoured Brigade was to be re-equipped with Churchill V & VI tanks from the mix of Lees, Grants and Shermans in the various units. There was also to be a Crocodile Troop in each Regt. The composition was to be:-
    146th RAC
    149th RAC
    3rd Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers)
    3/4th Bombay Grenadiers as the Motorised Infantry Battalion.
    Plus attached:-
    No2 Independent Bridge Group RAC with Valentine bridgelayers to convert to Churchill bridgelayers but these were not expected to be available until after 1 Nov 1945.
    4th Independent Scorpion Squadron with Grant Scorpion flail tanks, possibly to convert to APC role with converted Grant tanks.
    And possibly 150th RAC although it appears that this unit had a shortage of manpower and wasn't expected to be ready until Jan 1946.

    Churchill tanks for this unit were in short supply with only 23 on hand by 15 August 1945 although more arrived afterwards.

    Sherman III DD tanks were also arriving in SEAC to re-equip the 25th Dragoons in time for Operation Zipper. 34 Amphibious Support Regt Royal Marines equipped with LVT(A)4 were also to be in theatre in time for Op Zipper. Other units were also re-equipping with LVT Buffalo but I have yet to identify who they were.

    Then there is the question of what was to happen to 2nd and 36th British Infantry Divisions sitting in Southern India in Aug 1945, whose ranks were badly affected by Python. At that time they were effectively non-operational. Significant drafts of personnel, or new units, would have been required to bring them back up to strength.

    As for Archers in the Far East, I don't think it can be any more than trials vehicles. There is no mention of any Archers in the Far East in Dick Taylor's "Into the Vally. The Valentine Tank and Deriviatives 1938-1960".

    Finally, I should note that some Grant CDLs managed to find their way to India as they turn up in a "Funnies" demonstration unit immediately post war along with Sherman DD.

    While on the subject of the DD tanks, there were plans for 200 Sherman III(76) HVSS DD tanks to be converted in the USA for Britain at 50 per month starting in Sept 1945. This was a wholly new type of conversion.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
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  6. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    Now for the plans for the Pacific.

    Commonwealth participation in Operation Olympic would have been limited to the BPF, Tiger Force (or at least the Special Missions Wing (9 & 617 squadrons with Tallboy) of it) and probably some RAN ships in the bombardment forces (Hobart, Shropshire and the Tribals?)

    In papers placed before the British Chiefs of Staff in London on 25th May 1945 were 2 proposals for Commonwealth participation in Operation Coronet in March 1946:-
    1. British landing and Australian follow up
    2. Australian landing and British follow up.

    Option 1
    Reduced Army HQ + 2 Corps HQ.
    1 British Div from SEAC
    1 British Armd Brig formed in SEAC (34th Armd Brig?)
    1 British Beach Brig
    1 Commando Brig from UK
    1 New Zealand Div from Italy (so 2nd NZ Div)

    Follow up with 2 Australian Divs plus one more by D+40

    This would not have been possible until 4 months after the fall of Singapore, meaning Singapore needed to be captured by 1 Nov 1945 (D-Day for Op Zipper had not been fixed by that point. It was eventually set for 9 Sept so the schedule was tight to say the least). It was to be staged from India with only refuelling and reprovisioning at Singapore en route to Japan.

    In addition there was to be support from the RN (and possibly the French!!) from the East Indies Fleet (amphibious, bombardment and CVE cover) and the British Pacific Fleet. Air support was to come from Commonwealth countries.

    Option 2
    Landings by an Australian Corps from SWPA in US assault shipping.
    Follow up to be 3 divisions and an armoured brigade from India with escort only from the EIF.
    Air support as in Option 1.

    The US, and Macarthur particularly, did not really want Commonwealth participation in Coronet. The eventual "compromise" was a Commonwealth Corps of 3 Divisions as an afloat reserve and a follow up force of 2 divisions about Day Y+40. This to comprise:-
    X British Corps under Lt Gen Sir Charles F Keightley
    3rd British Infantry Div
    6th Canadian Div - as set out by Temujin above
    10th Australian Div - to be formed from units in existing divisions.

    No idea what the follow up divisions would have been or where they would have come from. They would not have been Indian Divs as MacArthur specifically ruled out the use of Indian troops "for linguistic and logistic complications". MacArthur's plans noted that all the landing forces would be American. "...British, Canadian, French and Australian troops, said MacArthur's report on the anticipated invasion, 'would be employed in case Japanese resistance should continue even after the heart of their Homeland was in American hands'....". Allen & Polmar "Codename Downfall".

    All were to be trained and equipped to US standards to simplify matters for the US supply chain. British 3rd Div was scheduled to move to Canada to train from Sept 1945 and at least the 20th AT Regt had begun to prepare for the move.

    New Zealand wasnt happy about being excluded. The US seems to have been happier about Canadian participation than British. The Australians wanted a commander (one of their own?) with experience of the Pacific war. A lot of politics had to be solved before this could have had a satisfactory outcome.

    The only parts of the Commonwealth forces that were more or less guaranteed participation in either Operation Coronet were the BPF, Tiger Force and elements of the RAN.
     
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  7. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    Wow, that's a lot of information! I'll have to read it again and refer to what each planned operation was.

    As far as Into the Vally is concerned I would not consider it conclusive on the Archer. Nobody has done a deep dive on the Archer which is why I decided to take a crack. I don't remember if that book has them but it may very well have one or two Archer photos from India. Those do seem to show a trial vehicle and there is an Archer chassis with 25 pounder in an open air museum still. (that's a bit of a mystery. There are some other photos of such a conversion but how one in India ended up so equipped is unknown.)

    The wading committee documents are on the Canadian digitized site and I will try to post links later. There seems to be a little more concern from the DRA in one meeting's minutes than might be warranted for a few trial vehicles.

    But then again I may be completed wrong. Certainly if more than a couple of trial vehicles were sent there is no record of them being in service prior to independence. (Then again they might have just been scrapped?) But I think any such documents might actually be in Indian archives?
     
  8. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    I've been gathering it all in dribs and drabs for years and interesting stuff keeps coming up. Free access to TNA has recently turned up the May 1945 discussions of the Chiefs of Staff and is a completely different picture from the one presented in all the books about Downfall and the proposed final stages of the war against Japan. Probably hardly surprising as most are written from a US perspective. And all when I was looking for something else!!
     
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  9. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    Here is the page in question. https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c5781/3255?r=0&s=3

    (And also re some of the technical developments leading to delays, https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c5781/2858?r=0&s=3)

    It's true it does say that Major Bradley had received no quantitative requirement, but the interesting thing is (w.r.t how long it would take to develop the scheme) "DRA had expressed concern, as he wanted the equipment by September"

    The most likely explanation, if the time frame for any use was 1946, I suppose would have something to do with training crews on the use of this. (?)
     
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  10. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    Hmm that's all VERY interesting. (I had to look up Python - demob operation which began July 1945.)

    This is total speculation, but the NWE War Establishments for Canadian and British infantry divisions called for 50% Archers in the anti-tank regiments. I wonder about whether there was a plan for 3 British Infantry Div and 6 Canadian to be so equipped. I suppose the WDs for 6 Canadian are probably online and maybe there is some clue!
     
  11. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    Highly unlikely for two reasons.

    1. Back in 1944 when Firefly deployment was being considered, there was no requirement from the Far East size of Japanese tanks. Whether bunker busting changes this is open to question.
    2. More importantly, US insistence that all Commonwealth units be given US equipment and be organised on US lines. Hence the need for 3rd Div go to train in Canada before going to the Pacific. 17pdr on its own is just a complication on the logistics front that the US was keen to avoid.

    I can see it being part of a plan that the British were working to, so perhaps the need to send out some test vehicles to India. But that went out the window sometime between May and Aug 1945.
     
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  12. Gary Kennedy

    Gary Kennedy Member

    The Canadian Div was to adopt the same Tables of Organization and Equipment as the US Infantry Divs they were to accompany. Effectively they were going to be a standard US Inf Div with different accents. The British Light Division WE did allow for an Anti-tank Regiment, however they were to be armed with 6-pdrs only. There was a caveat in the WE that allowed for 17-pdr guns, which required an increment of RA personnel to account for the additional numbers.

    I've never been sure if the Light Division org was to be used in the Far East only, or also for the anticipated invasion of the Home Islands. The Tank Battalion (Light) did specify infantry tanks, with three inf CS in Sqn HQ and two inf and one inf flame in each of the five Tps. I smile when I see it called a 'light' organisation! There were also Light series WEs for the APC Regt (dated July 1945) and an Armd Regt Special (Feb 1945) with CDLs. There were also Beach and Commando Bde WEs in the Light series.

    Gary
     
  13. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    AIUI in the “final” plan all the Commonwealth divisions for Coronet were to be organised and equipped on US lines I.e. as per the plans for the 6th Canadian model.
     
  14. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    I have most of the war diaries, I’ll see what I can find BUT as many these units were NOT formed, they may NOT have war diaries. Here are the list of Anti Tank Units, and the plan to equipment them with US Equipment......but I’m not sure what equipment that would have been, I’ll see if the war diaries tell us anything

    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
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  15. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    Well if that's the case, the plan may have been to use M36s, or something like that. All 3 of those WDs should be on the 'heritage' site so I can go digging. I never before had a particular reason to look after May '45.
     
  16. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    Found the 6th Cdn Division Pacific Force Headquarters, and going thru that.

    Interesting table right at the beginning showing the number of Positions in the “new” Division and how many volunteers the had recieved from NW Europe

    [​IMG]
     
  17. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    Found the documents........

    First, here is the Divisions equipment & personnel documents (and the included Anti Tank Companies)

    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]
     
  18. tmac

    tmac Senior Member

    The late Gunner George Baker, from Liverpool, served with 92nd LAA before being transferred to 20th Anti-Tank Regiment during the NW Europe campaign.

    He told me that after VE-Day in 1945, he was among soldiers of 20th AT who were actually put on a plane and told they would be flown to Maryland, USA, where they would train for the invasion of Japan.

    I can’t remember where they were located at the time they emplaned, but I remember George saying they flew to several places in Europe before learning they were not going to the US after all. George was eventually sent to Palestine, where he served until demob in 1947. George died in 2014.
     
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  19. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    Here’s the individual Anti Tank Unit establishment & equipment

    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]
     
  20. dryan67

    dryan67 Senior Member

    Here are the reels at Heritage Canadiana for CAPF war diaries:
    War diaries - Héritage

    CAPF - Base Headquarters - 1st Echelon
    T-10560 - pp. 325-854 ( 14_May_45-30_Jun_45)
    T-10592 - pp. 765-1572 (1_Jul_45_31_Aug_45)
    T-10593 - pp. 9-617 (1_Aug_45-31_Aug_45)

    22nd Canadian Army Tank Battalion (Cdn Gren Gds)(CAPF)
    T-12731 - pp. 18-56 (1_Aug_45-30_Sep_45)

    Headquarters 1st Canadian Infantry Regiment CAPF
    T-11332 - pp. 438-639 (28_Jul_45-26_Sep_45)

    Headquarters 2nd Canadian Infantry Regiment CAPF
    T-11135 - pp. 454-574 (30_Jul_45-25_Sep_45)

    Headquarters 3rd Canadian Infantry Regiment CAPF
    T-11138 - pp. 1114-1256 (10_Aug_45-22_Sep_45)

    Headquarters 6th Canadian Divisional Artillery (CAPF)
    T-15462 - pp. 1489-1681 (1_Aug_45-25_Sep_45)


    6th Canadian Engineer Combat Battalion (CAPF)
    T-18777 - pp. 1262-1557 (4_Aug_45-30_Sep_45)

    1st Field Artillery Battalion (CAPF)
    T-15929 - pp. 9-54 (7_Aug_45-26_Sep_45)

    2nd Field Artillery Battalion (CAPF)
    T-15936 - pp. 1349-1481 (1_Aug_45-25_Sep_45)

    3rd Field Artillery Battalion (CAPF)
    T-15956 - pp. 1305-1383 (1_Aug_45-30_Sep_45)

    4th Field Artillery Battalion (CAPF)
    T-15964 - pp.1070-1140 (3_Aug_45-24_Sep_45)

    Anti-Tank Company, 1st Canadian Infantry Regiment (CAPF)
    T-16379 - pp. 239-242 (20_Aug_45-31_Aug_45)

    Anti-Tank Company, 2nd Canadian Infantry Regiment (CAPF)
    T-16379 - pp. 244-248 (23_Aug_45-14_Sep_45)

    Anti-Tank Company, 3rd Canadian Infantry Regiment (CAPF)
    T-16379 - pp. 250-283 (20_Aug_45-20_Sep_45)
     

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